Tuesday, 28 July 2015

In a year of firsts, my Splendour In The Grass experience was the first proper camping festival experience, complete with mud and wellies!

First of all, thanks to Geri for being my tent partner for the weekend. It's great going to a show and have someone to talk shit to and laugh at all the inappropriate munts. And considering I was staying in the workers area and not actually a worker, I felt pretty chuffed I never got asked if I should be there or not. *ninja*

On the first night, we just chilled out to some comedy and drank some very horrible mid-strength beer. Seriously, Australia is fucked in the way it nannies it's beer drinkers. I like strong beer, because I can drink a few, be pissed, and then simply STOP. Just because others can't do that, doesn't mean I should be punished. Anyway, here's a "Nicolas Cage in a Cage" jumpy castle.

On the second day, I started early and headed to Byron to see what all the fuss was about. It's got a great laid back vibe and a nice beach and all, but it's not really different to any other rural-ish seaside town in Australia. After breakfast, I returned to the North Byron Parklands and plodded up to the main Amphitheatre Stage. It was still grassy at that stage, so I sat down and enjoyed Ecca Vandal, who I would compare to No Doubt. She did this cool mashup of Tricky's version of Public Enemy's Black Steel and Missy Elliot "Freak On" which got a good cheer.

After she played, I went for a wander and saw Genghar. This was their first time in Australia and they were alright. A bit RadioHead-ish, and a bit boring to be honest. I wandered back to the main stage to catch Marmozets, who were fucking rockin'! They reminded me of Hole at first, mostly because there was a skinny blonde girl on stage screaming at me. Musically though, they sounded like early Black Sabbath - and literally as I thought that they broke out into a cover of Sabbath.

DZ Deathrays were up next, and played some great hard rock, including a great cover of Daft Punk, which was unusual to hear in guitars, but great fun.

After these guys, I decided to go for a walk to get a drink, take a piss, and see if I could discover anything weird or fun. I found whatever the fuck this is. I'm pretty sure the music playing was Lionel Richie.

I wanted to see San Cisco tosee what all the fuss was about. San Cisco were ok, but they did sound like every other Triple J band from the last 5 years. Given the size of the crowd though, they are very popular, and the age of the crowd has made me label that music "Jailbait Pop". Feel free to steal that. I started to feel a little like a dirty old man, and decided I wanted to walk up the hill, because it was there and I stupidly thought the line up to the bar would be shorter. It wasn't, but the view is great.

They were followed by the Rubens, who were OK, but a bit of a dip in energy after San Cisco. So, and speaking of old men, Johnny Marr was on next, so I trekked over to the GW McLennan tent.

Oh. My. Gosh! It wasn't the Smiths, but who cares, it was Johnny Fucking Marr! I didn't really know what to expect from Johnny Marr to be honest, but was incredibly entertaining and a consummate performer. I even got emotional to the Smiths songs.

After grabbing some food, I watched Spiritualised. I thought I knew more of their stuff, but I did really enjoy what I heard. It was very soulful, bluesy and almost psychrock at stages.

My energy levels were draining fast, and it started to spit a little, so I wandered over to Of Monster and Men in the hope of finding a good spot to sit and chill before Mark Ronson. No dice as the main area was packed. OMAM were really quite folksy and not really what I wanted to hear at that time of the night, and the rain started getting heavier and I discovered my rain jacket was called that only in name, and offered very little in the way of water protection.

As an aside, this is the second time I have gone to see Mark Ronson and it has pissed down with rain. I'm starting to think it's him.

Because I had two more days to go, I thought I'm not going to miss Blur because I'm all sick and shit because I stood in the mud and rain, and besides, I had seen Mark Ronson before, so I bailed to the tent. I heard a few Mark Ronson tracks from the tent, but it was raining pretty heavily by then, with the pitter patter drowning out most of the sound.

The rain did, however, result in one of the greatest incidents of the first day. Escaping the rain in the hope it would ease up I stood in a little shelter which was the busker stage, where this off tap girl was sitting and being off tap, wearing inappropriate for the weather clothing that only young off tap girls can wear, chatting to people with the abandon of a young off tap girl. Then this super munted guy walks in and plonks himself right next to her, and she starts chatting away to him. This is how the conversation went:
"What's your name?" She chirps.
The guy doesn't answer, just sits there, gurning.
"Wow, you're like, totally off tap. What's your name?" she asks again.
Again, the guy doesn't answer. She turns to her friend and squeals "This guy is so off tap he doesn't even now his name!"
She turns back to him and says more slowly, as if talking to a foreigner or deaf person "What. Is. Your. Name?"
He mutters something, neither of us really hear.
"What do your mum and dad and friends call you?" she asks him, at which point I start laughing.
He still doesn't answer her with anything coherent, so she says "I'm going to start saying boys names and if you answer to one, that's what I'm going to call you. Bill, Trevor, John..." she starts listing boys names. At this point I'm about to lose it completely so I make a move back to the tent.

Softography

Producer on My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic on iOSProducer on Playful Minds Math on iOSAssistant Producer on Silent Ops on iOS

Krome Studios Melbourne:

QA on Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole on PS3, Xbox360 and WiiQA on Game Room on Xbox360Assistant Producer on unannounced and cancelled Wii titleAssistant Producer on Transformers: Rise of the Fallen on Wii/PS2Lead QA on SceneIt? Box Office Smash on Xbox360QA on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on WiiQA on Hellboy: Science of Evil on Xbox360 & PSPQA on The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels on Wii

Krome Studios Adelaide:

Senior QA on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on PSPQA on The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night on WiiQA on The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning on PS2

Ratbag / Midway Australia

Lead QA for Ratbag Games ToolsQA on Wheelman on PS2 (cancelled)Lead QA on Speedway Sprintcars (PAL) on PS2QA on Saturday Night Speedway on PS2 and PCQA on Dukes of Hazzard:Return of the General Lee on Xbox